Visiting Family

 
From left to right: Laird, Kyle, Richard, and Alison

For the past five days my youngest sister (Alison) and I have been visiting my middle sister (Kyle) and her husband (Richard) in San Antonio. Above is a picture of the four us on our last night together.

Back in March my siblings (there are five of us all together) and I were moving toward orchestrating a reunion in San Antonio (we had not all been together there since Kyle & Richard’s daughter, Alana, married Kevin in March 2008) this summer to help with a remodeling project in their backyard—converting an idle garage into an apartment they could rent. But those plans got shelved when Richard had a stroke in late April, losing use of his right side.

Miraculously, Kyle happened to come home within minutes of Richard being stricken and was able to get him into emergency treatment stat. Richard has been highly motivated to regain as much function as he can and gradually he’s been recovering use of his right arm. During rehab yesterday, Richard was able to lift a medium-sized ball, which required coordinated use of both his left hand and his right. That was a big breakthrough, and he practices exercises between his twice weekly physical therapy sessions to sustain the forward momentum. Most stroke victims have a window of about two years in which to regain functionality (essentially it’s the brain developing work arounds to replace neural pathways, bypassing blocked sections damaged by the stroke). It’s incredible how clever the brain is, yet patient motivation is a large factor in how far someone recovers.

As it happens, Richard is right-handed, which means that in addition to working to regain functionality on that side, he has to train his undamaged left hand to be more sensitive. It’s a lot of work. As an artist used to expressing himself through drawing, it has been very frustrating.

Reading email updates is nowhere near as helpful as being with Richard for several days to experience how he’s adapting and responding to the wicked curveball life delivered his way. In addition, it was great to see how Kyle is coping (the garage makeover got backburnered in favor of remodeling the back corner of the house to create an ADA bathroom). As hoped, Kyle took advantage of Al and me to handle some of the domestic chores and be available for conversations. It can be quite a strain on the primary care provider (who is also holding down a full-time job) when their partner goes down and many of the routines of 35 years of married life are turned on their head.

As a bonus, Alana & Kevin—and their two boys, Jack (6) and Henry (4)—came over Friday from Galveston and stayed until Sunday, lending youthful energy and willing backs to the main project of the visit: digging out the lean-to back porch that had become Richard’s “resource yard" over the years and was chock-a-block full of stuff of questionable utility and unknown provenance. This was necessary in order to uncover the back door, which was going to be relocated as part of the bathroom overhaul.

It was fun watching Alana, as mother, work patiently yet with clarity with her boisterous boys, expressing support while setting limits at the same time. Kyle commented on how amazed she is to see how competent her daughter is as a working mother (she’s second mate on a deep sea oil rig operating in the Gulf of Mexico)—not because she thought Alana wouldn’t be, but because she wasn’t confident that she was such a great role model (and how else do you learn?).

Kevin & Alana loaded their truck with whatever items they thought they could use back in Galveston, and the rest disappeared overnight when placed curbside beneath a homemade sandwich board sign that advertised “free.” (Whew.) It’s fascinating how one person’s junk becomes another’s treasure. Alison and I both departed Tuesday, leaving Kyle & Richard’s house ready for the contractors.

While we left being no clearer about that postponed family reunion, that's due to ongoing uncertainty about Richard’s capacity. He’s making too much progress to predict how far it will go—which is a nice problem to have.